Making the '60s Weird Again

The Whitney's boisterous survey breathes new life into a stagnant decade.

- ART / JERRY SALTZ

WE'VE BEEN SWIMMING in the 1960s for decades, replaying the era like a classic-rock album. The artistic movements that came out of that time remain as fixed as the stars: Pop, minimalism, conceptualism, Land Art, feminism. Over the years, curators have mounted endless tributes to Warhol and his circle, Judd and his boxes, Hesse and her synthetic materials. Many of these artists are good, some great. But most of the shows border on boring.

The electrifying first sight when you emerge onto the fifth floor of the Whitney declares that the museum's new show, “Sixties Surreal,” is not the same old same old. Three enormous double-hump camels by Nancy Graves stand in the gallery. All the tired vocabularies have been thrown out, replaced by a mad, post-minimalist openness and pluralism. In 1969, when these sculptures were first displayed, Time reported that “more than a few museumgoers suspected that Nancy Graves’ camels were part of an ingenious put-on.” They were onto something: an opening of the orthodoxy. This blast of fresh air only intensifies as you make your way through the rest of the show.

Here, the 1960s are surprising, powerful, and all over the place. The